I know the feeling.
My grandfather spend the last years of the war running from the Russians. He was only a teenager, and was in the Hitler Jugend. He had been visiting his sister who was running a store in Lithuania that served German soldiers (they were both native Germans).
There was a lot of stuff regarding the Russians that he just would not talk about. I even got him drunk one time, and got a little out, but there is some pain there. A lot of that he's going to simply take to the grave, I'm afraid.
That would have been terrifying.
Things were not pretty in the west. But the east was absolute madness by the end. There was no respect for life left, and little honour to be found anywhere.
It's a strange thing how people can end up so close to madness, and so filled with anger, violence, and fear. But then, after some time, it mostly 'wears off'.
If our grandfathers had met at that time, they may have tried to kill each other. But if they had met recently, there may have been no hard feelings.
People are strange, and fascinating.
People are strange, and fascinating.
That's why I love history, in a nutshell :)
Every time I see something like this, I try to picture my grandfather there, charging into machine guy fire.
He landed on Juno beach. The second best defended. But by the end of the day they had made it further than any of the other beaches.
He was always a friendly, easygoing person. I never saw him get angry, ever. He was optimistic, and empathic.
So I have a hard time seeing him as a bad-ass soldier.
He never spoke a word about any of the action he saw. But we know he was at Juno that day.
When I was younger there was a reunion. When my grandfather got there, they all stood and saluted.
He had only been a private. So I know he did something they felt significant to earn that.
But I had too much respect for him to ever ask about it. I knew he did not like to speak about it.